Here are two things we absolutely do know about life/afterlife from easily observed facts.
1—What you believe about an afterlife does not control what actually happens to you after you die. We know this because we know that the ancient Egyptians believed firmly that the Sun was the chief God. They believed that by building a vast tomb, mummifying and burring the Pharaoh there with everything he would need to sail to the Sun in the afterlife, even the builders would be assured of a place in eternity. We know that is what they believed because they wrote of it in hieroglyphics. And we know by the enormous effort they put into building pyramids that they must have fervently believed this would work. We know that despite their intense belief, their afterlife scheme didn’t work because 3,000 years later, the mummy, the ship that was to bear him to the Sun and all the food and supplies he was to use on the trip are still sitting there untouched.
2—We know that in this life, believing things will be better in an afterlife can be used as an excuse for atrocities and for ignoring pain and suffering here. Those who think this is all she wrote tend to use there time to write as much worthwhile work as they can in the little time they are allotted.
So I will take my chances living the best life I can live here and now. I am convinced by simple logic that doing that requires I follow the Golden Rule. If there is a God that will judge me and give me eternal life, I can only hope that is enough to secure my place. If there is a God that refuses to reveal himself openly to man but who requires that I guess which God of the thousands men have invented he is and that I follow some arcane set of rituals to please him—if living by the Golden Rule is simply not enough—and he damns everyone that fails his ritualistic test to eternal damnation, then I will be damned if I will worship such a ruthless, egomaniacal being.